Government Plans to Remove Wild Horses from Wyoming Checkerboard

Federal Government Plans to Eliminate Wild Horses from Wyoming Public Land

Proposed Settlement with Grazing Association Would Impact Half the State’s Remaining Wild Horse Herds

Cheyenne, WY (March 18, 2013)– A federal court in Wyoming is expected to rule imminently on a proposed settlement agreement between the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Rock Springs Grazing Association (RSGA). If approved, this agreement would remove wild horses from the Wyoming Checkerboard, a two-million-acre area of public and private land in the southern part of the state. The settlement is opposed by theAmerican Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign),The Cloud Foundation, and theInternational Society for the Preservation ofMustangsand Burros, who weregranted intervenor statusin the case.

“The Consent Decree, if approved, will have extreme consequences for the wild horses that are currently roaming free on thepublic landsof the Wyoming Checkerboard,” wrote attorney Katherine Meyer of the public interest law firmMeyer, Glitzenstein and Crystal, in opposition to the proposed consent decree.“[T]he Decree proposes to entirely eliminate more than one-third of the current allowable wild horse population in the state. These are extreme measures that will not only negatively impact the Intervenors’ interests but will have long-standing and devastating consequences for Wyoming’s wild horses.”

The lawsuit, filed by the RSGA in July 2011, seeks the removal of all wild horses from the private andpublic landsof the Wyoming checkerboard, which encompass several key wild horse Herd Management Areas (HMAs). According to the RSGA’s own filings, the grazing association filed the lawsuit after being advised to do so by then Assistant Interior Secretary Sylvia Baca to secure Congressional funding for more wild horseroundupsin Wyoming.

The RSGA grazes thousands of livestock onBLMlands in the checkerboard for tax-subsidized fees that are approximately 1/16thof market rate.

Proposed Settlement Details

• Zero out (eliminate all wild horses from) the Great Divide Basin and Salt Wells Creek HMAs, removing a total of nearly 2 million acres of wild horse habitat.
• Reduce by half the allowable population of wild horses in the Adobe Town HMA.
• Convert the wild-free roaming horse population in the White Mountain HMA to a sterilized, non-reproducing herd.

Joining the intervenors in their opposition to the proposed settlement was Lloyd Eisenhauer, a formerBLMmanager in the Rock Springs and Rawlins areas. Regarding the proposed elimination of wild horses from the Salt Wells and Great Divide Basin HMAs, Eisenhauer stated:

Eisenhauer also called theBLM’s plan to convert the White Mountain wild horse population to non-reproducing a “slow motion zeroing out of this HMA” that is “inconsistent with any wild horse management approach I am familiar with thatBLMhas implemented on public lands.”

Last week, final motions in the case were filed, and U.S. District Court of Wyoming Chief Judge Nancy D. Freudenthal is expected to issue a ruling soon. Additional information about the lawsuit is availablehere.

About the Organizations

TheAmerican Wild Horse Conservation (formerly American Wild Horse Campaign)(AWHC) is a coalition of more than 50 horse advocacy, public interest, and conservation organizations dedicated to preserving the American wild horse in viable, free-roaming herds for generations to come, as part of our national heritage. AWHC is a campaign founded and sponsored byReturn to Freedom.

The Cloud Foundationis a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and protection of wild horses and burros on our Westernpublic landswith a focus on protecting Cloud’s herd in the Pryor Mountains of Montana. Cloud is the subject of Foundation founder Ginger Kathrens’ groundbreaking PBS/Nature documentaries.

International Society for the Protection ofMustangsand Burros, founded over 50 years ago, was instrumental in securing the enactment of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, the landmark federal legislation that established protections for wild free-roaming horses and burros onpublic landsin the West.